Flash memory is a common type of non-volatile memory used for storage in consumer electronics. Flash memory is widely used for storing application data and/or media data in popular consumer products such as digital audio/video players, cell phones and digital cameras. Flash memory retains stored data in the absence of power, which provides a power savings advantage for consumer products. Flash memory can further be used as a dedicated storage device, such as a portable flash drive pluggable into a universal serial port (USB) of a personal computer, and a magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) replacement.
Recently, manufacturers have introduced flash memory devices with configurations that include multiple memory arrays, or memory planes. Multi-plane memory devices have been implemented in single-level cell memory devices and multi-level cell memory devices. However, multi-plane memory devices often have low read, program and erase speed. The speed of multi-plane memory devices can become a critical performance issue as the number of memory planes increases. While the multi-plane configuration allows data from one channel to be transferred to a buffer during a wait READ/PROGRAM interval to improve the data transfer time associated with this one channel, the multi-plane configuration can cause reduced system performance when data is transferred from multiple channels.